AMD has released the K7 !!

[Benson]

Except it's official name is "Athlon".

Here is their blurb:
AMD SHIPS THE WORLD'S FASTEST x86 PROCESSOR
AMD today announces that is has commenced volume shipments of
its new, seventh-generation microprocessor, the AMD Athlon(tm)
processor, to computer manufacturers. Formerly code-named the
AMD-K7 processor, the AMD Athlon processor is available in
initial speeds of 600, 550, and 500MHz. http://www.amd.com

[Terra]

Oh Yes! - I've been waiting for these to roll-out...

FQuest Adoption path:
1) Min 800-900Mhz
2) .18 Micron FAB
3) 3 - 6 months for the chipset and memory manufacturers to work the initial kinks out
4) Make sure of full Linux support for both non-SMP and SMP capability
5) Linux support of the S-Bus
6) Prices fall to an acceptable level

After the SIX server fiasco (instability) with the SMP features, I plan on being ***very*** cautious with the 4th or 5th generation server, whichever the K-7 makes it into...

SIX is a high-horsepower machine, but the side-effect of that was introduced instability...[nbsp][nbsp]I am hoping that 2.2.x becomes rock-solid in the upcoming months and the K-7 slides right into our growth path...

--
Andrew Gillespie
CTO/Systems Administrator
FutureQuest
[This message has been edited by ccTech (edited 06-24-99)]

[Justin]

You better believe as soon as I have the cash I'll be picking up a K7 - my K6 233 MMX has been very good to me for the last year (geez, it's been that long??) but I've been feeling it's limits for most of that year :)[nbsp][nbsp]I push this thing all the way.

Terra would probably slap me if he saw the fan I have on this socket-7 chip... it's a 3" squirrel cage fan, never intended as a CPU fan but the 2" fan just didn't cut it - and it has overheated a couple of times in the past, but never since the new fan :) It's held to the heat sink with wire ties... big mess in my box hehe :)

I promise I won't do anything remotely this pathetic to the K7 though - unless it proves necessary ;) And I won't spray paint the next box either, as long as I can find a black case :)

I used to have pics of the computer in it's case but I don't know what the heck I did with them... if I'm not mistaken they're on the net somewhere on one of my oooold home pages lol!

------------------
Justin Nelson
FutureQuest Support
[This message has been edited by Justin (edited 06-24-99)]

[Jacob Stetser]

Wow.. all the things ya do. Ever since this FreePC arrived, I keep the AC set down to 40 degrees. With the chip's heat, it gets up to a nice comfy 65 at the computer desk.

Nahh, just kidding. It's the Motorola G4s I'm hoping for, though. I had a few friends go to the Machack conference and they're telling me the G4 prototypes run about 3 times faster when the Altivec unit kicks in (altivec helps with 3D, networking, voice recognition, encryption, stuff like that. Sort of like MMX without the context switching)

But I'm stuck with Win98 on the PC for 30 months, unless FreePC upgrades to 2000 for me :þ Then it becomes a Linux machine. woo hoo! I'm going to install PHP and MySQL on it whilst it's still running Windows, though.

Oh, how is this remotely connected to this thread? FreePC has an AMD chip...333 mhz :)
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[Justin]

I still can't believe they put 32 megs in a 333 - I'm struggling with 64 megs - isn't 32 the minimum required to even boot up Windows (not to mention all of the FreePC ad software...)?

Are you allowed to crack the case? If so, I'd slap about 128 in there minimum - RAM is more important than CPU speed usually, especially when you couple a kick butt CPU with no room for it to work - let's put a single barrel carb on a 400 big block :)

But hey, for free, I guess you got a good deal :)

------------------
Justin Nelson
FutureQuest Support

[Jacob Stetser]

Yeah, I can upgrade hardware til I go crazy in the head. Just can't use any other OS :þ

Soon as I get back from Macworld in July, I'll be getting more RAM for this puppy. As it is, I'm pretty much broke trying to pay for a plane ticket and a hotel room in Manhattan :þ

But it plays Diablo well :)

Jake
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